#rebracketing

[hbmmaster]

"let's ago!"

[linguistics-and-such]

Rebracketing is a fascinating (in my opinion) thing that happens in languages.

Rebracketing is when a compound word or portmanteau (words made up of two other words or affixes) is "rearranged" so that different affixes are made from the original ones.

For example, the word "hamburger" was not made from combining the words "ham" and "burger". Rather, it was made by combining the word "Hamburg" (as in the city in Germany) with the suffix "-er" (meaning "of" or "from"). However, "hamburger" was rebracketed from [hamburg][er] to [ham][burger]. So, when we build new words from "hamburger", we use the brackets "ham" and "burger", not the brackets "hamburg" and "er". Thus, we use "cheeseburger", "fish burger", "veggie burger", etc. We don't use "cheeser", "fisher", "veggier", etc.

Another good example of rebracketing is "helicopter". It was originally made by combining the word "helico" (meaning "spiral") and "pter" (meaning "wing" or "feather", as in "pterodactyl"). But, over time, it was rebracketed from [helico][pter] to [heli][copter], resulting in words like "helipad" and "gyrocopter", not "helicopad" and "gyropter".

One more, and my personal favorite, is "alcoholic". It comes from the word "alcohol" and the suffix "-ic" (meaning "of" or "pertaining to"). Over time, though, this was rebracketed from [alcohol][ic] to [alc][oholic]. This results in words like "workaholic", "chocoholic", and "shopaholic", not "workic", "chockic", and "shoppic". One joke you might see a lot in linguistic circles is "What's a workaholic addicted to? Workahol!"

For a great article containing more examples of rebracketing, check out the article Starkey wrote about the subject.

[rafr]

Isle of Rebracketing

[oneefin]

the word "cheeseburger" implies the existence of the german city Cheeseburg.

if you look closely at your map of germany you may also see Beefburg, Chickenburg, Fishburg, Veggieburg, Blackbeanburg, Impossibleburg, Nothingburg, and Whataburg

some maps may even contain the obscure Whopp, the location of burger king's hq, or even Baconat, the location of wendy's' hq

[santumerino]

rebracketing

apng is the dumbest file extension. i already knew it was a png. what is next? apdf? amp3?

[unproduciblesmackdown]

laughing all the way through this menu especially singing the celebrate christmac and cheese 😭

[sonsband]

I really do need to get my shit together and stop letting the mind games get in the way of my pole work

[thunderboltfire]

The side effect of my mother tongue is that I’m automatically rebracketing the word “githyanki”

In Polish, the suffix “-ki” is characteristic for plural nouns.

When it comes to people, there’s a group of female nouns that pretty regularly usually ends with “-ka” includes nationalities and town citizens. So French woman would be Francuzka, pl. Francuzki, Swedish woman would be Szwedka, pl. Szwedki, girl/woman from Warsaw would be warszawianka, pl. warszawianki, it’s pretty consistent, because largely the basic form of nationality is male, and female form uses the formant “-ka” during the word formation.

So by my first instinct, the word “githyanki”:

- sounds like a female noun

- sounds like it’s plural, and the singular form would be githyanka.

Which is not true, because githyanki is one of the names that remain completely unchanged and uninflected in translation and as far as I know it’s a name that can be either singular or plural and it doesn’t change its form at all. However, I can’t get rid of that notion and playing BG3 only reminded me of it.

[paksenarrion-dorthansdotter]

we also have "an apron," which was "a napron" at one time! gotta love rebracketing

here have a fun etymology fact that sounds exactly like a shitpost:

adders (those european snakes) used to be called "nadders", but people kept mishearing "a nadder" as "an adder" and eventually just started writing it down the latter way.

the same thing happened in reverse with newts, which went "an eute" => "a neute" => spelling eventually shifted to "a newt".

[brightgreendandelions]

have you dyed your hair?

if so, what colours have you done it in before?

yeah, but there wasn't enough to do my full hair. and it turned yellow after 3 months and back to normal after a year :(

i want to do it again...

here, read my previous post!!

[yeoldenews]

While we’re on the subject of names, is there an explanation for how traditional nicknames came about that are seemingly unrelated to, or have little in common with, the original name?

ie- John/Jack, Richard/Dick, Henry/Harry/Hank, Charles/Chuck, Margaret/Peggy/Daisy, Sarah/Sally, Mary/Molly, Anne/Nan, etc

I am actually over a week into researching a huge follow-up post (probably more than one if I’m being honest) about the history of nickname usage, so I will be going into this in much, much more detail at a hopefully not-so-later date - if I have not lost my mind. (Two days ago I spent three hours chasing down a source lead that turned out to be a typographical error from 1727 that was then quoted in source after source for the next 150 years.)

As a preview though, here’s some info about the names you mentioned:

The origins of a good portion of common English nicknames come down to the simple fact that people really, really like rhyming things. Will 🠞Bill, Rob🠞Bob, Rick🠞Dick, Meg🠞Peg.

It may seem like a weird reason, but how many of you have known an Anna/Hannah-Banana? I exclusively refer to my Mom’s cat as Toes even though her name is Moe (Moesie-Toesies 🠞 Toesies 🠞 Toes).

Jack likely evolved from the use of the Middle English diminutive suffix “-chen” - pronounced (and often spelled) “-kyn” or “kin”. The use of -chen as a diminutive suffix still endures in modern German - as in “liebchen” = sweetheart (lieb “love” + -chen).

John (Jan) 🠞 Jankin 🠞 Jackin 🠞 Jack.

Hank was also originally a nickname for John from the same source. I and J were not distinct letters in English until the 17th Century. “Iankin” would have been nearly indistinguishable in pronunciation from “Hankin” due to H-dropping. It’s believed to have switched over to being a nickname for Henry in early Colonial America due to the English being exposed to the Dutch nickname for Henrik - “Henk”.

Harry is thought to be a remnant of how Henry was pronounced up until the early modern era. The name was introduced to England during the Norman conquest as the French Henri (On-REE). The already muted nasal n was dropped in the English pronunciation. With a lack of standardized spelling, the two names were used interchangeably in records throughout the middle ages. So all the early English King Henrys would have written their name Henry and pronounced it Harry.

Sally and Molly likely developed simply because little kids can’t say R’s or L’s. Mary 🠞 Mawy 🠞 Molly. Sary 🠞 Sawy 🠞 Sally.

Daisy became a nickname for Margaret because in French garden daisies are called marguerites.

Nan for Anne is an example of a very cool linguistic process called rebracketing, where two words that are often said/written together transfer letters/morphemes over time. The English use of “an” instead of “a” before words beginning with vowels is a common cause of rebracketing. For example: the Middle English “an eute” became “a newt”, and “a napron” became “an apron”. In the case of nicknames the use of the archaic possessive “mine” is often the culprit. “Mine Anne” over time became “My Nan” as “mine” fell out of use. Ned and Nell have the same origin.

Oddly enough the word “nickname” is itself a result of rebracketing, from the Middle English “an eke (meaning additional) name”.

I realized earlier this week that my cat (Toe’s sister) also has a rebracketing nickname. Her name is Mina, but I call her Nom Nom - formed by me being very annoying and saying her name a bunch of time in a row - miNAMiNAMiNAM.

Chuck is a very modern (20th century) nickname which I’ll have to get back to you on as I started my research in the 16th century and am only up to the 1810s so far lol.

[official-linguistics-post]

dear linguistics person

is there a name for like. incorrect suffixes? that were cut off incorrectly from the original word? i can only think of two examples (-holic from alcoholic and -copter from helicopter) but there must be more. please tell me there's some sweet sweet hyperspecific linguistics term for that and maybe some more examples!!!

REBRACKETING!!! like hamburg+er > ham+burger.

one of my fave rebrackets is "nickname": originally an eke-name "an other-name," it got reanalyzed to tack the -n from the indefinite article onto the front of eke, and because of THAT we now get folk etymologies like the idea that it refers specifically to nicholas>nick

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

Already mentioned this in the notes, but for the benefit of anyone else wondering:

It's a linguistic process called rebracketing! In our world, this nickname formation was seen with the affectionate "mine Edward" becoming "my Ned". Or "mine Edmund", Edgar, etc, a bunch of "Ed" names that got the nickname "Ned" in history. GRRM is just leaning on that same process with his Westeros variants Eddard and Edric, probably expecting them to be recognizable since such Ed/Ned names occur in Shakespeare and other popular history and historical fiction sources.

Rebracketing is also how Nan became a nickname for Ann or Anna, Nell a nickname for Eleanor or Ellen, and how "my nuncle" came from "mine uncle". Oh and some of my favorite examples of rebracketing: Hamburg > hamburger (originally a ground meat dish from Hamburg) > burger > cheeseburger, and the Arabic al-kuḥl ("the kohl", a fine powder of antimony made into a tincture) > alcohol > alcoholic > chocoholic or workoholic. Rebracketing is very neat.

Never understood how you got from Eddard to Ned

[oneefin]

nonapology

n.

the study of the supreme court

[alexanderwales]

A Pedant's Guide to Linguistic Mistakes

Language is a funny thing. It only works when everyone is on the same page, but it's so large that actually getting everyone in compliance would be an impossible task even if we all agreed to it. Loan words slip in, meanings change, euphemisms become canonized, words and phrases undergo reanalysis, reinterpretation, rebracketing, it's a big giant mess.

But people do make mistakes, deviations from the norm that are "wrong" because everyone agrees that they're wrong. If we didn't agree they were wrong, or they were used by a cluster of people, we would call them differences in vernacular or dialect.

No, what we're here to talk about is when people are wrong enough that you can correct them on it, and I'm taking the historical approach here, rather than the definitional one, though this will be in the form of a glossary.

catachresis - This is generally considered to be a catch-all term, with one definition being "the use of a word in a way that is not correct". The most common variant definitions are "use of a forced and especially paradoxical figure of speech" and "mixed metaphor", either in error or for rhetorical effect. I think here we see some of what marks the language of language mistakes: over-broad definitions, lots of vibes, and no one agreeing quite what the specifics are. The word dates to the 1580s. One of the classic examples of the "mixed metaphor" sense is "blind mouths" from Milton's "Lycidas", another is "take arms against a sea of troubles" from Shakespeare's Hamlet, both presumably for poetic effect.

mondegreen - This is when you mishear something and repeat back the incorrect thing. It was coined in 1954 by Sylvia Wright, you can read her piece in Harper's here. She says in the essay, "The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original." Sadly, no one includes the "better than the original" part of this in their definition. Instead, they say that this is an error that comes from mishearing a song or poem, better or not. Some only say "especially" from a song or poem, allowing that a mondegreen might be any kind of error produced from mishearing. Extremely common with song lyrics.

malapropism - A malapropism is named after Mrs. Malaprop from the 1775 play The Rivals, you can read it here. This is a comedy of manners, and Mrs. Malaprop's joke is that she uses a bunch of words wrong while making an effort to appear educated and upper class, a very classic trope from before this play was written. The self-satisfied character of Dogberry in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing was the go-to before Mrs. Malaprop, and these kinds of errors were called "dogberries" or "dogberryisms" before that. In 1858 there was a play Our American Cousin, with the character of Dundreary, and for a time these were called "dundrearyisms", but this didn't stick. (An interesting thing about class in these plays is that sometimes it's an upper class person being a twit, which is funny, and other times it's a lower person with pretensions to a higher class they clearly don't belong to, which is funny.) One of the key features of a malapropism is that it's exaggerated, ridiculous, or foolish, especially if it makes the person saying it look like a pompous idiot. That said, the word has been around for about 250 years, and it's drifted into meaning "an error", depending on which dictionary you read. Some emphasize the ridiculousness, some the pomposity and pretense to education, some seem to think "an error" is enough. Before you use the word "malapropism", watch a performance of The Rivals and then think to yourself "is this something that Mrs. Malaprop would say?"

metathesis - This is when you mixed up two parts of a word. The most common one I know of is when a child says "pasghetti". This is generally a speech error, so not something you need to worry too much about in text. The one I think irritates people most is "nucular" instead of "nuclear", unless we're going to talk about racially charged ones, in which case the one that annoys people most is probably "aks" for "ask". The word metathesis dates to the 1570s, comes from Greek.

barbarism - This one has no currently accepted meaning in linguistics, but it used to mean the mixing of languages, and has meant a variety of things over the course of approximately 1700 years, and no one really uses it now. If you wanted to use it in the classic sense, you would say that someone using a Spanish loanword is engaging in barbarism. Which sounds pretty racist. Probably avoid this one.

solecism - A grammatical mistake, like using "between you and I" instead of "between you and me". Funny enough, the word traces back to Σόλοι (Sóloi), an Ancient Greek colony where they spoke a "corrupted" dialect of Attic Greek. Crazy how millennia old geographical prejudice gets invisibly woven into our language.

vulgarism - This is when you make an "error" that's really just lower class speech. It's different from vulgarity, but if you use this word outside an academic context, or maybe even within it, expect trouble. Best examples are probably "ain't" and "y'all". I cannot imagine correcting anyone on either of those, but it's not always so clear cut.

hypercorrection - This is an error made while attempting to avoid errors. Someone corrects you on "whom" instead of "who" so you start using "whom" everywhere without understanding the rule (it's that "who" is a subject pronoun and "whom" is an object pronoun). One that English speakers make with Spanish loan words is pronouncing "habanero" as "habañero" since they've been taught Spanish loan words have the "ñ" sound.

mumpsimus - An error that's clung to. The apocryphal story is that a poorly educated priest was giving Mass and said "mumpsimus" rather than "sumpsimus", then kept doing that even after being told he was wrong. This story was told to make a point about obstinate refusal, which is what marks this. Comes from 1510s, but the word itself is a nonsense word, probably meant to be a mishearing. (Note: I have also seen this used for any person who persists in an error after being corrected, but this seems less common.)

sumpsimus - Coined in opposition to mumpsimus, this is when you use a word correctly in defiance or replacement of a popular or traditional (but incorrect) word. The pedant will often cling to old definitions even as the language shifts, and defend this even though they're in the minority. That's sumpsimus. It's unclear to me whether this is meant to be laudatory.

folk etymology - Folk etymology is also called reanalysis, and happens when unfamiliar words are replaced with familiar ones. It's not supposed to mean "made up etymology" by analogy with "folk tale", but I've seen "folk etymology" used that way a lot, and linguists sure seem to have bungled this one. You'd think they would know better. My favorite example is "shamefaced", which comes from "shamefast", meaning "fixed firmly by shame". People "decided" that "shame on the face" made more sense, so the expression changed. Is this "an error"? Only if few enough people use it. If you used "shamefast", you'd get laughed at, ha ha.

eggcorn - This is an error made through mishearing or misapplication that alters meaning. This is the most recent term on this list. It's from 2003! You can read the post here, arguing that it's a distinct thing. I kind of disagree with the definitions there, and part of the argument put forward is that an eggcorn should involve homonyms, which in practice is not how the word "eggcorn" is now used. Some definitions mention that this needs to be a single person's mistake, otherwise it's just a folk etymology, so perhaps we could say that an eggcorn is failed or nascent folk etymology. Funny enough, the OED first definition of "eggcorn" is "acorn", citing 1844 as its date of origin, and actually, if you use Google's n-gram viewer, you can see that "eggcorn" shows up (presumably in error) pretty frequently.

spoonerism - An error, usually verbal, where you transpose the sounds. There was an Oxford don and priest, William Archibald Spooner, for whom these are named. He did it a lot, and everyone was very affectionate about it. Dates to 1900.

kniferism and forkerism - Alright, look, these aren't real, but they were made up by Douglas Hofstadter, so I'm including them. If a spoonerism is when you switch initial sounds (this is in contention), a kniferism is when you switch middle sounds, and a forkerism is when you switch ending sounds. He also coined "sporkerism" and "foonerism", which require recombination. These are nonce words, don't actually use them, Hofstadter was doing a bit.

nonce word - A word made up for an occasion or "for the nonce". Not actually an error, usually, just someone making a new word to express something and be promptly thrown away. Sometimes it's got some etymological suggestion to it, but sometimes it doesn't. A particularly famous example is from the play Our American Cousin, the second time it's shown up here, strangely enough. The line "you sockdologizing old man-trap" was the biggest laugh in the whole play, which is why John Wilkes Booth chose that moment to shoot Abraham Lincoln.

Alright, that was my fun little guide, sorry to end on an assassination joke.

[bigeloo]

Couldn't think of any creative/related rebracketing